Penina Weiss Bowman was born and raised in Cluj, Romania (in 1940 it passed to Hungary). Her family was Orthodox and owned the local mikveh. In April 1944 Penina and her family were deported without warning to Auschwitz-Birkenau. Penina and her two sisters, Yaffa and Miriam, and her brother, Mordechai, were admitted to the camp but her parents, Isaac and Leah, and other family members were murdered on arrival. Penina stayed in Auschwitz for four months then was shipped to Germany to the Mahrisch-Weisswasser labor camp, where she worked making electronic equipment. She was liberated from Mahrisch-Weisswasser slave labor camp. In a displaced persons camp in Salzburg, Austria she met her future husband, Harold Bowman. He was Jewish and an American soldier who was stationed there with the army. They got engaged and Harold gave her a silk parachute to make into her wedding dress. He had to leave with his unit while Penina tried to get into Palestine. When all legal attempts failed she tried to get their illegally. The British intercepted her ship and interned the passengers in Cyprus. Eventually she was admitted to Palestine, where she joined Harold who was already there. They were married in March 1947 in Palestine. Harold's family was from Chicago, Illinois and they immigrated to the United States after their marriage. Penina discusses her family and religious upbringing in Cluj, their deportation to Auschwitz-Birkenau, her initial refusal to break kosher in the camp, slave labor, her transfer to a slave labor camp in the Sudetenland, her liberation, post-war travels, illegal immigration to Palestine and meeting and marrying her husband, Harold Bowman, in Palestine. She also discusses her life in the United States where she eventually settled in Atlanta, Georgia. Penina today is a speaker at the William Breman Jewish Heritage Museum in Atlanta, Georgia.